Enfants Noyés Nature Reserve

The Enfants Noyés Nature Reserve[1][2] (French: Réserve naturelle des Enfants Noyés, commonly called the Étangs des Enfants Noyés; Dutch: Vijvers van de Verdronken Kinderen) is a nature reserve consisting of three large ponds located in a valley of the Sonian Forest in Brussels, Belgium.

[3] The Réserve naturelle des Enfants Noyés is French for the Nature Reserve of the Drowned Children, but it owes its name to a mistake.

[3][4] By successive inheritance, the ponds became the property of the van der Meulen family, an important family of freshwater fish merchants in Brussels, many of whom were deans of the guild of freshwater fishmongers.

Archaeological traces of human settlements, stone axes, arrowheads, scrapers, hammers, as well as spherical vases with flared necks (preserved at the Royal Museums of Art and History) dating from 3,000 to 2,200 years BC were discovered between the valley of the nature reserve and the valley of Vuylbeek.

Also not far from the ponds, multiple tumuli, probably built during the first millennium BC, are visible.